The Ryan Hanley Show - RHS 060 - Katlyn Eggar on Why Being "Casually Confident" is Secret to Closing Online Leads

Episode Date: August 30, 2020

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comKatlyn Eggar, Director of Education Development for Quantum Assurance Internations stops by the podcast for EPIC conversation on all things crushing online leads to rapidly grow an independent insurance agency. Get more: https://ryanhanley.com/Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hold it, one, and welcome back to the show. Today we have a very dynamic guest, someone who I think you're going to absolutely adore this conversation. It's Caitlin Egger, the Director of Education and Development at Quantum Assurance International. And we've actually had one of Caitlin's counterparts on the show, Jeff Shee, who is one of the founders of Quantum. And you've probably heard Quantum's name tossed around. Caitlin was interviewed by Cass, and just Quantum is making a big splash in the independent channel

as they basically build out their network of agents and are doing some really dynamic things. And why I wanted to have Caitlin on is she made a comment on Cass's podcast, buying leads online is more predictable than referrals. And I just love that concept. Whether you agree with it or it makes your skin crawl, either way, you can't deny that it is a perspective. And I think it's worth exploring. And I'm excited. I was very excited to have Caitlin on the show. She absolutely crushed. And you're going to take something away from this episode. So just super happy to have her on. Before we get there, I want to give a big shout out to my people at Better Agency, betteragency.io, betteragency.io.

You got to check them out. I'm telling you, they are just like I predicted Tarmaca. I predicted Tarmaca. I've been telling you about Tarmaca for six months, seven months, but before that, since January, I think I've been telling you about Tarmaca. And obviously, Tarmaca is taking the world over. The exact same thing is about to happen with Better Agency. The exact same thing is about to happen with Better Agency because this is insurance agency owners building technology to push our industry forward. These are game changing, equalizing technologies. I use Better Agency. I absolutely love it. Absolutely love it. So go check out Better Agency. If you're looking for a CRM, if you're looking for a tool that's more plug and

play, that you don't have to be a rocket ninja automation warrior in order to use, if you're looking for something that's already got copy built in, that's already got campaigns built in, that has a sales pipeline, a service pipeline, a renewal pipeline, I mean, this thing captures notes, tasks, attachments. It captures phone calls. It captures your text messages. It captures all your emails. I mean, it is the most dynamic system that is also easy to use. So go to betteragency.io today, get a demo,

know what the tool is. So even if you're not ready right now, at least you know, go get that demo, betteragency.io. Tell them Hanley sent you. All right, let's get on to Caitlin Egger. So, okay. So you are traveling again. You're in some other place. I don't know anybody during COVID that travels as much as you do. Well, we're like in our van. It's pretty germ free in there. You know, there's at least there's no COVID in there as far as we know. So as you know, yeah. Depends on who you talk to. There's COVID everywhere. Right. So we, we were working, we had never tried working from home before. And so we sent our sales teams to work from home back in March and we're, you know, working from our home offices and we'll,

we definitely will get back to the place where we're like back in the call centers on a regular basis and everything. But it works so well. And since we're still kind of in that like limbo time or like some people are working from home, some people are in the office, we've, we've just been getting out and about and seeing, going out and seeing people where they're at instead of flying them in or putting anybody on an airplane and um it's worked out well for us and the kids they've got their school books with them and um it's been a it's been great so you're in the you're in the van driving around and then you just live out of a hotel or whatever? You know, yes, but it's only been like 10 days.

So I wouldn't say, you know, it's not like permanent. Yeah. We still have a home base in Texas. Did you think about going RV? Did you think about going RV? We joke about it. But we bring our nanny with us. so she's got to have her own space and all that good stuff. So, um, yeah. So hotel rooms are a little bit easier for bringing the

whole crew. And I think we're, we're getting, we're getting good at it. Like I, um, I packed a little bit less this time around. We were trying to go a little bit more reasonable with what we're packing every trip and i try to bring everything but the kitchen sink with me when we go yeah how old are your kids five and six oh yeah so i get yeah the interesting thing so mine are six and four and uh and the interesting thing about that i found about that age is like, like, COVID hasn't, it doesn't mean anything to them, they just completely adapt. Like, they're just like, Oh, this is okay. This is the new world. Fine. All right, we're good. Like, you know, flexible. Yeah, they just, you know, I think,

I definitely see, there's not a judge on parenting, but the parents who have like gone a little COVID crazy and like had their kids like in bubbles and they can't see other kids and they're like alone all the time. When you finally interact with one of those kids, those kids are like bananas. But the kids that have been allowed

to see other humans and interact with them a little bit, like those kids, they could care less. Can we talk about how awkward it is to set up play dates for the kiddos right now? Because everyone, there's like this whole spectrum. There's the people that are like,

oh, we don't do playgrounds right now. Like we're just not, we'll do picnic, but if we're six feet apart, maybe six feet apart. And then you have the people that are like, hey, wanna go to the trampoline park and bring the kids yeah so until you know you're like i don't know how to like send this text text message you start out and you're like so does um does helen want to do a zoom play date with caris and you know bring her dolls and they'll talk toys and then like hey do you guys want to do a picnic we'll bring a kickball it's so funny i completely agree so we kind of started that way and then now we're just like

look we don't even believe in covid so if you're on that you know what i mean i mean i believe in it's a joke but like as far as like i mean unless you show up at my house with like covid snot dripping out of your nose i basically am just to assume that you wouldn't come over if you didn't think that you were at least okay. Right? This whole thing has been a roller coaster because back in March and April, I felt like whole country on the same page. Unity, if you're walking in the park, it's like you nod.

You're like, you know, we were walking the golf course that's across from our neighborhood back in April, and a couple that was coming in the opposite direction, I think the lady like sneezed, and I'm like, it's okay, probably allergies, and she's like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, thank you, and you know, everybody's on the same page, and now I feel like we're in this um interesting space where everybody's on a different page and you have no idea where this you know the person that you're talking to what their preferences are what they feel comfortable with so we've been doing a lot of um uh air elbow bumps yeah it's it's funny I um so that's a Texas reactionas reaction in new york they would have been like kick them

out put them in jail bubble them bubble wrap them six feet apart it was good it was yeah brand them right on the forehead sneezer in public right run them down that that's how it would have happened here people are bananas up here like i get it i get it and the other part about it too is like um i agree with you on how so because of how crazy some people up here are there are the crazies on the other way too that are still like walking into convenience stores with no mask on and can we talk about the gas stations for a minute if that you know that i love them i'm glad they're open but it's not the cool you know just bring your hand sanitizer try not to touch anything when you're in there yeah and i guess yeah that's i mean look i'm i personally i'm not afraid of covid i'm not afraid of it for my wife

i'm afraid for my kids if i were 65 and and had pre-existing condition, I'd be scared as hell. In general though, I completely get the, Hey, just, just throw a mask on. I don't love it. I actually hate it. I hate wearing a mask. I don't like that. I can't see people's faces. I just, I like, you know, you had to like learn to smile with your eyes a lot. You know what I mean? Like, cause you just, yeah, cause that's all people can see. But at the same point put the freaking mask on it's a stupid mask you you walk in the store put the mask on wear the mask in the store and leave i don't love it i don't necessarily consider it like uh i i just i i think it's crazy that there are still like these grumpy old fat white dudes that are rolling into the store like i ain't putting my

mask on screw you like come on what's funny is when you're on a road trip you you do stop in a lot of you know different gas stations in different states and there's definitely a difference you can definitely tell where you are based on whether the cashier has a mask on or not um i i just i um i feel like it's been so hard for families and moms to figure out, like, what do we do? How do we take care of our family, you know, our high-risk loved ones, but we don't want our kids in a bubble. And it's really hard because there's all these unknowns, these huge decisions. And at the end of the day, we want what's best for our kids and for, you know, grandma and grandpa and, you know, the loved ones in our life. So I definitely think it is harder for people that live really

close by to their grandparents. Yeah. Or someone that's a loved one that is high risk. And, you know, while the stats for children overall are, you know, not as, you know, maybe frightening as for some of the adults, there are kids that have, you know, immune system issues and stuff. So I certainly have, you know, compassion for all the moms out there that are no matter where they are on that, like space, like spectrum of like, you know, how much space they want. And it's been really tricky just figuring this whole thing out, hasn't it? I agree. And I think that is a perfect segue into the topic that I wanted to discuss with you,

which is I had heard your name before, and then you were on Cass's podcast, which was awesome. I thought it was a great, great show. I was, you know, I was really taking in what you said. And in particular, and, you know, when we had a chance to talk a little bit, um, you had even said like, it wasn't why you went on the show, but it's kind of where you went. And, and I wanted to take that conversation even further, which was the idea of buying leads or just growing your business via leads. And this is a huge, huge bugaboo for me because David Crothers is going to have to take a drink or make fun of me or whatever because I use this analogy too much. But my philosophy kind of in life, but particularly when it comes to growing a business, is like the Bruce Lee model, like be like water, right? Like fill the cup that's in front of you. And, you know, I think we get so dogmatic on certain ideas that we allow ourselves to be boxed

in or to, we'll, we'll, we'll allow, we'll allow our business to stagnate at the expense of doing something that we view as below us. And in our industry, particularly on the independent side, now coming from all state, right? Like coming from the captive side, I think for you and Quantum having this kind of captive legacy to them, like a legacy culture to you guys, it's just like part of the deal. It's part of the business. Like this is what you do to grow. In the independent side, it's like, you're a loser. Oh, you buy leads? Ah, you have to buy leads. You know what I mean? That's like a scarlet letter that you wear around a conference. And, um, and I've always like, it's been something I've always, I built my book of business way back when, um, when I first started

in this business on net quote, net quote, a dollar a lead. I remember that I'm getting flashbacks now. Yes. You'd get in when net quote added text messages. That's when it really took off for me because I had a phone that actually did text messages. So when the text would come through, I could get to that person first because I had the text on my phone. So like it was, you know, and I don't even talk about that memo. I don't know why, but like I, I got a lot of my escape velocity stuff. So, you know, and I don't even talk about that memo. I don't know why. But like, I got a lot of my escape velocity stuff. So you know, I harassed my family, I wrote my family. And then after that, who do you write, right? So I'm doing all the standard stuff. Net quote was a big part of that. So I look at today, and I'm like, Oh, my gosh, it's a decade

later, and people are still acting like online leads are somehow less value. Folks, I just wrote a homeowner's account today from a bought online lead and it took me an hour, right? An hour, an hour. And that's not an hour is a word of the work. That's like the lead came in and an hour later I had a bound policy from a bought lead. I paid $7 for the lead. And an hour later, I'd signed a $1,300 homeowner's policy. So this is a real way to grow your business. And you know what's interesting is I don't think it's just independence that, you know, think internet leads might be beneath them

or something that people used to do 10 years ago. I see it on the captive side every day. And so I think there's a lot of reasons for it. But if you think back to how agents used to build their business before internet leads, if you're buying an agency from your dad, your uncle, your grandpa, and you have this legacy agency and you're in this family of insurance agents, no way they built their success on internet leads, right? They were out there getting to know people in their community. Your dad was probably showing up when somebody had a claim and being there and they passed on that personal touch and that care for people in their community. So it became this standard of quality, right? Because of how it used to work, right? But I think you can do both. I don't think

that your agency has to stop networking. I don't think that you have to stop showing up for your referrals or stop working those mortgage broker relationships. But we have this sea of opportunity in front of us right now that's working and you can get in front of quality clients. You can position your agency where clients are doing their shopping and really have the best of both worlds. But it's all about the systems in your agency and having a process for being able to navigate two very different conversations. And the conversation with a referral because your buddy sent them over and said, you know, hey man, call this guy. He's really good, is a completely different conversation

than reaching out to somebody who came to you because they were online because they googled like you know insurance chantilly virginia and so it's you're you're asking your team to be flexible and you gotta have a strategy in place but at the end of the day it's about meeting our clients where they're at so ryan um you know if you don't mind sharing, what about your family? Do you guys buy any products online? Do you shop online for clothes, school stuff? Like most people, there's a heavy stream of Amazon boxes that arrives at my house. Right?

Yeah. I think what's interesting to me about this part of the conversation is it comes back to something that is kind of the core differentiator, I believe, in our industry. So I believe there are two types of agents. There are business owners and there are agent owners. Agent owners, they just like to write insurance. So for them, a referral comes in. It's great. They can buddy them up. Yeah, beat him at golf the other day. Yeah, he refers me some business. Bro, you know, bro it up. And then you put their insurance package together. It's already sold because your referrals, you kind of just walk through the coverages with them, show them the price. Here's what it is. Great. Give me your

credit card done. I'm an insurance agent. That's amazing, right? That's an awesome way to do business, except you can't really grow in anything more than a slightly linear path on that methodology. You can't. So what happens is the next thing agents do is like, okay, I'm gonna be growth focused. I'm gonna go after mortgage broker referrals. Okay, that's a great path. And you can grow. GNN has grown that way.

A lot of people have grown that way. Grant Botma, Nick Ayers, a lot of people have grown that way, which is good. But you have to reach out. So that's level two. You still are at the discretion of those loan officers thinking about you, sending you referrals. There's all kinds of things you can do, but it's still a teed up

lead. The online lead, like I'll just take this guy that I just wrote today. You got to sell him. You have to talk to him. You have to get to know them a little bit on the phone. I mean, they don't know you from Adam or Eve. You actually have to talk to them on the phone and say, here's what my agency does. Here's why you should think about working with us versus someone else. Here's why I gave you this policy and you have to justify the premium that you're quoting them. And I think that that level of sales, I think when, when agencies hit a certain size or agencies have a certain disposition, they just do not want to be bothered with that. They just don't. They just don't want to do it.

It feels beneath them to have to explain why they're offering a certain premium to someone. They just want the person to take it. I think that there's a difference in strategy here, right? Because when you're working the referrals and the mortgage brokers, and that's great. If you're seeing results from that, keep doing it. That's awesome. Like, don't let that fall by the wayside. But that's a little bit more of an organic flow to where your sales are coming from, right?

Someone reaches out to you because you are top of mind. So you can live a lifestyle where insurance is what you do. It's a part of who you are. You're talking about it on social media. You're reaching out to your buddies. You go to some networking events. You golf. You make sure that you're introducing yourself to the mortgage brokers in your network and they come across your path. But that should grow organically as a complement to the actual business processes that are already occurring within your agency. So working your digital marketing leads and having a predictable flow of internet leads coming in, that's your bedrock foundation. That's what sets the motivation for your team, the momentum for your team, the culture for your team, so that they're just clipping along at a pace. That's what sets the motivation for your team, the momentum for your team,

the culture for your team, so that they're just clipping along at a pace. It's not about like, oh, internet leads are beneath us. Well, you know what's beneath us is sitting around, tapping our fingers, waiting for the phone to ring. That's what's beneath us. And so you can shift the whole mindset and culture in your agency by giving your producers what they want. And that's having a warm lead in front of them and someone to talk to. Because man, if you can get a live person on the phone, and that's half the battle right there. So it's all about increasing their at-bats. And when you do that, it starts to take shape. It takes a little bit of time to figure out. But when you do, now you have this predictable flow that's coming into your agency.

You can really crack open this conversation, start looking at the data, start figuring out how many you need to buy for which person and what the close ratios are and how much you have to invest to get the premium that you need. But the referrals are still happening because it's organic. You're still talking on social media. You're still, you know, engaging people that you come across in an everyday basis, whether it's online or in person right now. And so you're still getting referrals, but you're not crossing your fingers,

holding your breath, hoping that this mortgage broker relationship is going to work out. Because you know what? That mortgage broker that has, you know out because you know what that mortgage broker that has you know huge office and 40 brokers and you're like oh my gosh this relationship's amazing and they're going to send us so much business what happens when one of your producers something goes wrong you lose that relationship or you didn't do anything wrong you did an awesome job but their brother opened up an agency around the corner and boom, now that person's getting all of their referrals. So work them, get to know people, make sure you're top of mind and that they look at you as being the go-to person for their referral

business. But we can't bank on that. It's not as predictable. It's not as, I don't think it's as steady and consistent and predictable as what we like to tell ourselves that it is because, um, just because it's a great client, just because it's a great quality lead, just cause it's high retention, just cause it's less expensive. Doesn't mean that we're not missing profit and revenue opportunities in other areas. Yeah, I completely agree. And I think that it, so it's, it's funny. I, I, I, I've really, COVID has made me reevaluate my strategy in a lot of ways, just, just from the nature of the shakeup. And I've, I've kind of taken a two prong approach to growing my agency.

I use David Carruthers killing commercial Method. I work, you know, going after the middle market, working with comp. I went and got my certified workers comp advisor designation from the Workers Comp Institute just because I wanted everything I can get because I believe that that's a really solid way to bring in the type of businesses that I want to work with and businesses that will appreciate the advisor relationship. Okay. The other side of it is I have an incredibly deep belief that a base of personal lines is important to the longevity, sustainability, and just the, you know, keeping your beta down, right? Like you don't want huge swings in your agency. You want your agency, you want to have predictable income, predictable growth. And so, so what I, what I, what I'm doing is backfilling my work, cold calling, you know, doing content marketing outreach to these middle market accounts

with personalized accounts. Okay. How do you get personalized accounts when you're a startup agency? You get personalized accounts by testing different lead providers. And what I found just a couple weeks into doing this is if you have a straightforward process that gets a hold of the people quickly and delivers value, they choose you. Like, it's really wild. Like, all this, oh, you know, it's so difficult to get ahold of these not really, I haven't found it difficult to get ahold of people, you have to be responsive, you can't call them back two days later, you know, but lead comes in, CRM hits them with a couple

messages saying, hey, we're working on it, we'll be in touch really soon. You get back to them with a with an introductory quote, you call them on the phone, you talk about the quote, you revise it, you, and then you close the business. It's, it, this isn't rocket science to me. It's, it's just, and there's no reason that person can't be a good, good, just because someone filled out a form somewhere online doesn't mean that they're a bad account. Like, I guess I just, I hate that idea. I hate that. We all shop online for everything else. So there's nothing wrong with a client going online to Google cheap insurance, Winston-Salem, right? That's just what they've been trained to do by all of the ads out there. Our job is to give them a reason to stop their insurance shopping journey today. And so it's a, it's a tall order.

We have to up our game that we're talking about taking this conversation next level. This is a more intricate conversation than just working with a referral that already has some trust in you because they heard about you locally or through someone that they know you're already kind of a little bit ahead because then they at least have heard positive things about you. There's some social proof there going on that's on your side, But you don't have to lean on that like a crutch because you're already an amazing agent. You're already providing a ton of value. You just have to go in it casually confident and show up and be ready to clip along at their pace. You have to be on fire and on point because you only have a couple of

seconds to capture their attention. So you can't sound like, you know, uh, you know, the, the, the kind of salespeople that, you know, don't have a likable personality over the phone. You know, you, you gotta sound casually confident, like you're, they've reached the right person and that you're gonna be able to take care of them, but not like, Oh, this person's just calling to sell me something. Nobody likes getting those telemarketing calls where someone's like, you've won a free cruise. Right? So there's certainly a technique to what that conversation needs to sound like. And it's just about being real and authentic and not sounding like super over salesy be somebody that they want to talk to you on the phone. Yeah, I think, I think the idea of casually confident is really important because if they,

yeah. And, and Carruthers talks about this all the time in his stuff about how, about they can smell, they can smell your, your like premium, your, they, you can, they can smell that all you want is the business, right? They can smell it in your word. They can hear it. They can smell it. and immediately it turns people off. But if you can talk to them in a way, and again, I'm not the best on the phone by any regards, but if you can talk to them in a way that shows them, look, I would love to work with you. Here's what my process is. Here's what my product is. But if you decide that I'm not for you, then, you know, that's, that's fine with me, even though, you know, you want to sell as many as you can. But if you give that air off to them, they don't feel like you're putting them into a

corner. And I think that's what turns off a lot of the people who first approach you, who, in this case, we're talking about online leads, you know, these people don't have trust in you. They filled out a form, you're the one that approached them. So there's no connection yet. If you try, if you box them into a corner early, they immediately have their guard up and they think that you have some sort of ulterior motive or, or get the sense that maybe you do. And if you can approach them in a way that says, look, you know, this is just, this is the option. It's the option I would give you.

Everything that I've done says to me that this is going to be really good for you long-term, but I need you to take a step towards me too. You have to want this. And that seems to draw them in a little bit versus just, here's what it is, take it or leave it, you know, or like the, it's just, you know, it's a completely different thing. What I hear producers do most often is they get that person on the phone and they're like, Hey, I got your request. Can I, you know, can I give you a quote for your insurance? The person says, sure. Okay.

So what kind of car you got? It's a Toyota Highlander. Let me verify some information. I work with seven carriers. I'm going to be able to shop this for you. I don't know if any of this sounds familiar, but I hear this often because it's what our gut tells us we're supposed to say. So we're just winging it. And what we actually have to say to be successful feels a little counterintuitive at first. We can't start by saying, I'm an independent

agent and I'm with value insurance and I work with this many carriers and I'm going to shop you. Start by making it about them first. They've never heard of value insurance agency, right? That's not one of your strong points. So if they ask you, oh, now who are you again? Where are you calling from? That's the right time to introduce your agency.

But don't start with something that just isn't going to land or hit home. Start by making it all about them. And so the way that you pull off the things that you just mentioned, Ryan, about not coming on too strong is start asking them questions about them. Who doesn't like to talk about themselves, right? So who are you insured with right now? Oh my gosh, tell me about that. Your rate went up?

Tell me what happened. And you're having an organic conversation at this point. You're not trying to fill that first two minutes with everything about you and how many carriers you have and how you're going to shop them. And it makes it a little bit easier to get a conversation going. So the question that I, that I asked, I try to start with in any of these types of conversations is, so what's going on? You filled out a form somewhere. What's going on? Why'd you do that? And I just try to keep it as open and as generic as I can and let them go because they may have filled out a form for homeowner's insurance, but really they're going, you know, man, my car insurance goes up every year. My agent

is my agent's this, or my, you know, my I'm getting divorced from my wife or, you know, I had a really bad claim. You have no idea what's actually going on. You just know that they had intent. So if your first thing is, let me give you a quote, they're going to say, like, just like you said, they're going to say, sure. Where if your first question can kind of catch them off guard, which is, hey, you know, the way I usually start or the way that I start these conversations whenever I get, and I kind of picked this up when I was doing a lot of content marketing and I had a lot of inbound content. You know, people were calling me off the internet because of my website. Now the Murray Group reaps all that benefit. You're welcome, Shorty. But, you know, I would just say, hey, you know,

my name's Ryan. I'm the owner of Rogue Risk. What's going on? Why'd you fill out the form? And now you'll hear them pause for a second because that's not what they're expecting. They're expecting you to go, okay, you know, how many cars, you know, what's the VIN number of your car? Hey, you know, what price do I need to be? That's what they're expecting. When you just ask them what's going on, they'll go, well Well, my rates going up three years in a row. Okay, why is that? Well, I had a really bad claim. Oh, okay. So now in your head, now you're starting to, you can actually be a value provider. Well, what did the claim look like? Well, I had this $1,200. Why'd you put a $1,200 homeowners claim in? Who told you to do that? You know what I mean?

Like, and now you can start to drill into what actually is their motivation and by the time you get to the end of that conversation one you most likely have all the info that you need two with realty track and red fin and zillow you don't need to ask them how old their home is like if you're still asking someone well how old is your home that's you're wasting time. And you sound like, like you, those questions are, even though the carriers still want to know that information and need to know it, I guess, to a certain extent, you should not be asking people that information. In my opinion, you should not be asking them that it's all there. If, if, you know, so while they're talking, I'm okay. 22 Johnson road. Okay. Bang. I'm looking at, okay. So, so, so you had a $1,200

game. Okay. It looks like you have a flat roof. Is that true? Yeah. Okay. Bang. I'm looking at, okay. So, so, so you had a $1,200 game. Okay. It looks like you have a flat roof. Is that true? Yeah. Okay. Is that a rubber roof? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Good. Okay. Boom, boom. And you're just verifying what's on realty track or whatever. And once I see that a couple of pieces of information, the same, I know I'm close enough that I don't need to ask them any of the other bullshit questions about their home. Right. Do you have a dog? Yes or no. if that matters to some of your carriers. And then it actually sounds like a real conversation. And I think that completely throws people off guard. A pattern interrupts their classic experience that they get. Right. You can retrain the client

surrounding what they expect out of their insurance shopping experience. So I'm glad we're talking about this because some of the things that I hear most often are things like, oh, I tried internet leads, but nobody picked up the phone. Or, you know what, I bought a bunch of them and I quoted a ton, but none of them closed. Or, oh, yeah, you know, I'm not going to go that route because there was this agency that came into town and they were selling all this business and we found it was all state minimum and all fell off the books. So I think there definitely has to be a strategy around it and what you just

hit the nail on the head because the sales conversation, it has to be a client focused value based conversation where you're asking meaningful questions and you're selling with a purpose. And so before you think about buying internet leads again, before you think about giving it another go, there's a couple of things that have to fall into line first. And the first one is your, what your conversation is going to sound like. So start before you invest in the leads, thinking about it like a sales engineer. Sales engineer this conversation.

Call a buddy and role play it with them and say, hey, here's what I'm thinking the best technique is. Refine it. I'm the director of education and development at Quantum. So it's my job to write our sales processes and our top pass and our scripts and capture what's working for us on the front lines every day through our direct channel, through our agency channels. So that helps automate the sales onboarding process for the people that are showing up for our clients, making our company great every day. And selling with purpose is our hallmark quantum sales process that walks our agents through exactly how to begin this conversation. You have to start by making that instant connection that you spoke to Ryan, so that you can overcome objections to the quote. It all starts with having the right mindset. So go into that call, assuming that that person is not going to want to talk to

you. Don't go into the call, assuming that they're like, Oh, hey, Ryan, you're the owner at Rogue Risk. Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you called me today. Yeah, you're not Jeff Bezos or you know what I mean? Like you're, they don't care to talk that you own the business. I actually had that happen one time and I was like, oh my gosh, I think I'm being secret shopped. So you have to plan out what the sales conversation is going to look like and have a plan for how you're going to drive a client focused buying experience from the very first 30 seconds of the call all the way through the close. So you can actually create a buying experience for the client that empowers them to end their shopping journey today. You can actually

one call close this car and home bundle for this family by doing a total risk review for their family right there on the phone live without hanging up. And you can end the call with a great client just like you did. You said it was yesterday or today. And so you've got to go into it with a plan. And I suggest practicing first. If internet leads, you tried them before and they didn't work for you, or this is a new process for your agency, you can go into it on the cheap, right? Like you can start by like cutting your teeth on this. You don't have to go in and day one, like dump like $10,000 into this or, you know, one or two. I'm definitely not spending $10,000. Don't start there, right?

Because before you play in the major leagues, you practice, there's a ladder, right? So this is a harder conversation. You want your team to be prepared so that they can get their confidence up. So that looks like, hey, whoever is the sales leader in your agency, for a lot of our listeners, it's probably the agency owner. And that's great. If that's you and you don't have a sales manager right now, awesome. You should be in front of your team coaching, role playing, creating that coaching culture of feedback within your agency on a daily basis. So if internet leads are new to you, try to carve out some time where you're learning to sell them yourself first. Or if you have a sales manager, your sales manager has some time where they're figuring out this sales conversation

first. Because once you or your sales manager has a great close ratio on internet leads, now you can start training your team on it and start unleashing that lead source to your, your Salesforce, right? So ease into it, learn it yourself first, because let me tell you, this is a fun conversation. Once you're like, man, like I, I've never seen our quote volume. I've never seen close ratios like this. I've never been able to drive business like this before. We just wrote a ton of clients. I just bundled. They're all multi-line. You're excited about it. Now you have a reason for your team to be excited about it. So have a plan and start there because then, you know, you're starting with maybe some cheaper, like aged leads, just,

you can get really good at talking people into getting a quote with you. And then you're going into it really strong at your at-bats, right? Then you can start dabbling with some more expensive lead sources. But I think sometimes we're so, um, so worried that internet leads won't work that we try to buy the most expensive leads first. And then because we're still cutting our teeth on it, we don't end up making enough money on that batch of leads to just keep throwing money at it. And so we pull back and we stop and we go back to what we know, which is the client referrals and the market referrals. I think a couple other important ideas is have, have, have some, you have, well, let me start that again.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. I've done too much talking already today. So I think an important point here is to, you need to have some sort of automation system for this to work. And the reason I say that it doesn't have to be super sophisticated, or it can be, but you definitely have some way when that lead comes in, there needs to be an immediate touch. And for my from so I use better agency, everyone who's listening probably knows I use better agency, I think it's a phenomenal tool. When a lead comes in, they immediately get an email and a text from me. The email basically outlines their expectations, which is, I am going, we've received your information. Someone is working on your

account right now. If we have enough information to provide you with an introductory quote, you will receive a video breakdown and proposal in your email within an hour. If not, we'll be reaching out to you either way. Thank you. The text message. So that just sets the expectation. We're, we're efforting. You didn't just put your information into the, into the ether and it's gone, right? Right. Like someone is here. There there's real people behind this. The text message simply says, Hey, thanks. We got your request. Check your email. It breaks down the process. That's it. That's all the text message says. So then, then have a couple days of that broken out where you're hitting them again, hitting them again. So just to say, Hey, you know, we never got ahold of you. We never did this because you know, it takes multiple times.

I think people feel like if they don't pick up the phone on the first try, Oh, Oh my God, it's not, it's a bad lead, bad lead. Uh, when we were at trust, when I worked for trusted choice.com, Oh my God, I, we recorded, I mean, you probably know this from listening to quantum agent calls, but like we recorded all these calls, um, that would go to agents and like, basically the agent would one, pick up the phone and immediately try to disqualify the lead. Oh, you only want renter's insurance. Oh, you're, you're 24. Oh, you know, I really only have progressive and it's probably gonna be like $30,000. Is that okay with you? No. Okay. Bye. Or if they, if they did get an inbound lead,

they would never call the person back or they would just email them back and be like, Oh, they never got back to me. It's like, you need to email them seven times maybe because I love producers like that because it creates low hanging fruit for, for our million dollar producers over at quantum. So you're just warming them up. The good news is I feel like this is what I love about the Independent Channel, especially the last five or six years. I think the last five or six years in the Independent Channel, the game has really been stepped up.

I feel like there's a lot of people who, I think in general, everyone is way more open. And I think what that has done is shown people, hey, look, you can be so many things. Like I would like to consider myself middle market whale hunter, because this morning, I was working on a $200,000 premium account that I have two carriers that I'm kind of, you know, positioning against each other for this proposal. And then I'm also writing an internet lead for $1,300 homeowners

policy. And my reason for saying that is like Carruthers always says you have to be, and I keep quoting Carruthers. He just, he's awesome. Dude's like wedged into my brain, but you have to be a Swiss army knife, right? There's being, you need to be good at a couple things, but they can be different things. You can be that, that macho whale killer, you know, whatever, and write some homeowners insurance or some auto insurance through internet leads to like, you can do both those things. And I think that's completely okay. And ultimately, I think it's a smart decision. Because I think one, it keeps you fresh to I think it spreads out your, your book of business so that if a certain part takes a hit or something happens, you have some

sustainability. And it's just more business. Like why sit around during the day and like, look at, you know, Ben Shapiro videos on Facebook when you could be closing a homeowner's account, right? You know, you know what the number one most motivating thing is for a frontline sales producer, a sales agent that's writing business? What's the number one most motivating thing for that person? We think it's time off. We think it's bonuses. We think it's, oh, we're going to give you your kid's birthday. That's awesome.

But you know what the number one most motivating thing is for our sales team? Writing a policy, writing business. Have you ever seen them more excited, like jumping up and down? I mean, if you come to one of our call centers, we're like hooting and hollering and like the music is blasting and there's nothing more exciting than writing business because that's what salespeople are here to do. That's where they get their adrenaline. So create an environment for them where that happens for them day in and day out. Yeah. And you're going to see their energy go up. You're going to see that momentum building your agency and sales is a mindset game. You have to have that momentum where that snowball is rolling downhill and it's

just getting bigger and bigger and more energy. And you're going to see the culture in your agency become more fast paced. You can have, you know, that music going, have everybody at their standup desk. One thing that works for us is an open layout because then your salespeople aren't in these, they're like individual little offices and you're like, Hey, go make 300 phone calls. And they go in their office and they're like, Oh my God, it's so terrible. You can have them out on an open sales floor with music, with stuff on the TV screens where they're just like, you know, cranking through the dials, just like rocking it together as a team having fun. This doesn't have to be like, hey guys, I really need you to grit your teeth.

And I like really need you guys to just rip this bandaid. And I just really need you guys to just do this for the agency. You can make this super fun and totally transform what the day-to-day life looks like in your agency where they come in and they have clients to talk to because that's what's going to be most motivating for them. And when you see that happen, this is one of those big massive action steps that you can take that has that ripple effect that we all want. We're all looking for like, what's that big step that I can make where everything else is going to fall into place. Now, if you can figure out this digital lead marketing game, not only

has the culture in your insurance office shifted to a different kind of sales office with that faster pace and that energy. Now you have the predictability into the numbers, you're able to back dial it to come up with a strategy for the numbers that you want to hit. And you see, you see a difference in your recruiting efforts. I talk to agents all the time that are like, Hey, you know what, I've got these ads out. I'm just not, it's just so hard to recruit people. I'm not sure how to find the top talent. And when you have these success stories that you can get in front of candidates and you say, Hey, you know what? Our agency operates a little bit differently than the one down the road, because you're going to

have warm leads. You're gonna have clients that reached out that want quotes that want to talk to you. That's a whole different recruiting conversation than like, Hey man, I'm looking for somebody with grit because we go to, we go door to door here. Now, I've been door to door several times when I've gone door to door to get quotes for all kinds of things. It's a great method. It works. Don't stop doing that if you're especially a commercial producer. But it does make it a little bit harder to recruit people because then you're only finding

people that are like, yeah, I'm all for that. Let's do this and go door to door. Right. Now you're opening yourself up to all this talent that could really rock it on the phone. Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think, I imagine the quantum Salesforce kind of like Jared Belfort, you know, Wolf of Wall Street, like up there, like banged himself in the head with the thing and screaming into the microphone, you know, and everyone's losing their mind, you know.

It's so funny. We have a really diverse team, so just so many fun personalities. But most recently, you can check out our LinkedIn, Quantum Assurance. One of our producers just this week hit $500,000 in premium in less than her first six months with our company. And she's, you know, she is just this awesome young woman who just gives it her all for her clients every single day. She's not a pushy salesperson. She doesn't have that like aggressive sales conversation by any means, but you know what? She's casually confident. She's prepared and she shows up for her clients and doesn't just give them a halfway presentation. She doesn't say, Hey, you know what? Thanks for giving me all that information. I'm going to work

up your quotes and call you back. She stays on the line with them until she gets them taken care of. And her, she, I mean, we're talking quality business. We're talking bundles. We're talking great clients. She does amazing, but she doesn't have this stereotypical, like, you know, wolf of wall street feel at all, total opposite. And I'm just so proud of her because she uses the resources we give her. We have an amazing education program at quantum settling with purpose really works. And so she puts her resources to work and she studies them and

she doesn't turn it off. And she is trending to be a million dollar producer in her first year at Quantum. And she's not the only one. But it's just, we can totally change our expectation of what an internet lead conversation has to look like. Yeah, I think, I think that's great. Two other things that I'd like to say are, um, one, you, you don't have to work for the bundle every time. Sometimes solving someone's problem is enough in the first conversation to start the relationship. If their issue is they, you know, they're just getting crushed on their auto insurance and like that's the problem that they need solved and wrapping their brain around bringing their home in or whatever. And that conversation is just too much, but you can solve

their auto problem there, solve their auto problem and then come back. And then, you know, and again, this is what a good CRM, good note-taking, you know, good process, good cross-selling is all about because then you can notate the system and say, hey, a month from now, I want to circle back with you. Let's talk about bringing your home in. It'll probably save you money across the board. But today, I'm just glad we got your auto taken care of. They're going to be so happy because you didn't shove the auto down or the home down their throat too. You know, because sometimes people are all different. Some can take in the whole conversation. Some just want you to solve their problem. And I think that's a big piece.

The other thing too is on, you know, you can turn a lead into, so a lead comes in from the online and a lot of people go, well, yeah, you know, they're buying leads, but you know, how much, what the retention on that's probably shitty. Well, it can be just like anything else.

Or if you treat them like real people and not online leads, it can be the same as every other piece of business because you set expectations because you, you onboarded them. You talk them through what to expect. You help them understand your service process. You got them all the information that they needed to move forward with their life. You saved them money. Maybe you sent them some messages during their policy period about your agency or about their insurance program.

You cross sold them. You asked them for referrals, a Google review. And now come renewal time, they're not shopping anymore because no one likes to shop. I think that's the thing. Like, I feel like to me, the way that I've always approached this is, and again, I told you, I told you on the phone, buying online needs a blind spot for me in terms of doing it as an agency owner, but, but the concept and working and talking to people is very familiar. And, you know, for me, the idea has always been, if someone's shopping online, it means they're lost, right? They're like a lost child. They're walking the streets of New York with no real idea of where to go. And it's why they keep trying every agency, a really good process, a good product.

You care about what's actually wrong, what problem they're trying to solve, and you treat them well after the sale. They're not going to shop anymore. No one enjoys shopping for insurance. It sucks. It's terrible. You think they're just going to be like, you know what? I had a tremendous experience. I have a great price, great product. The people I work with are awesome. I'm just going to go shop for insurance again this year. Nobody, no one does. No, they just want to have a great enough experience that they don't have to worry about it anymore so they can take a back seat. And it's totally opposite for us, right? Because we can talk insurance all day. This is our hobby. This is what we do. I know. One of my, the top things on my list for what's most fun. And we can't expect that out of

our clients. Yeah. Well, I, you know, I, we could talk about this all day. I want to be respectful of your time. Um, I appreciate you coming on the show. I think, um, I think what you guys at quantum are doing is really shaking up the industry in a very positive way. I know, um, I know different people have different feelings about these big sales focused agencies when they come into our space. I mean, I'm sure you've gotten some of that feedback, because I just know how agents think. But I think in truth, I love when, when, when a driven group of people come into this space that have a distinct path, that have a philosophy, because what it does is it forces all of us to rethink, you know, regardless if anyone actually believes anything that we said, I'm positive that if they listen to this whole episode, it at least got them

to start thinking about how they operate their agency and just the value. Maybe they said, you know what, I listened to all of it. I believe it all, but it's still not for me. No problem. I think what's good is that we're having these conversations and that we're kind of putting out into the open that there is this way of helping grow a business that isn't negative. Like it has negative connotations, but it isn't actually negative. It can be very positive. Not negative at all for your client if you're showing up with quality and if they can tell that you care. And that's why Quantum was born because we're really helping fill this need in the agency space where someone can bring their agency on board to Quantum and immerse themselves in this ecosystem where we say, hey, we believe in the agency model. We believe in

you and what your teams are already doing. And we're here to help you level it up. We help you figure out how to have that mega startup. We're probably $6 million in internet lead experience of working with thousands of internet leads over the past 10 years, trying to crack this code of what that conversation should sound like. And that really helps our agents hit the ground running so that we can take the mystery out of how do we scale our agencies and start seeing results that we've never seen before. And then you see your agency and your lifestyle benefit, but also your teams because you're making it easier for them to do what they're passionate about. Yeah, I think it's great. Thanks for coming on the show. I wish you guys nothing

but the best and I look forward to the next time we can connect. This was a blast. Safe and healthy. Yeah. Hey guys, wasn't that just a tremendous episode? I loved talking to Caitlin. She's just dynamic and what they're doing over at Quantum, I think is really amazing stuff. And whether that's the way you want to build your agency or not, it doesn't matter. What matters is that you know other ways that people are thinking about our business because you can always take little pieces and plug them in where they make sense for what you're trying to build. And that's the beauty of an independent agency. So I just want to say to you, thank you for listening to this show. I love you for listening to this show. It means so much to me. I love putting these podcast episodes together.

And if you enjoy this show, you know, I would just ask that you tell one friend, just tell somebody, you know, just say, Hey, maybe you want to listen to this show. It just helps our audience grow. And if you're feeling super froggy, hop on over to iTunes. Leave us a rating and review there. That just helps more people find our show. It just helps more people get in the ecosystem, which is what this is all about. Sharing ideas, introducing people. All right, enough of me.

Let's get on to the brilliant, the brilliant Brock Barragan running us off. Yeah, me Yeah, me Yeah, me Yeah, me You go fuck yourself and your fat fucking ass. Walking or driving, take it easy, do it, do it, do it. Do you want to have a few drinks and smoke a joint bubbles? Yes. Thank you. Make it easy, make it easy, oh oh oh Make it easy, body's walking around me Make it easy, make it easy, oh oh oh Make it easy, life's a good job, baby

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